This proposal is a request for partial financial support for a meeting on MOLECULAR CHAPERONES AND The HEAT SHOCK RESPONSE to be held from May 5 - May 9, 2004 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This meeting is the premier international format for presentation of new results in this area, and is attended by representatives from virtually every major laboratory in the field. The explosion of new information on how the folded state of proteins is acquired and maintained in vivo and the involvement of this process in an increasing number of disease states as well as the aging process guarantee the excitement of this meeting. Among the highlights of the meeting will be sessions devoted to: (1) Protein misfolding and disease emphasizing the role of alternative folding pathways and increasing evidence for chaperone involvement, with attention to Alzheimer's Disease, polyglutamine proteins and the aging process (2) the explosion of structural and mechanistic information on some of the most intensively studied chaperones, (3) the integral role of chaperones in diverse cellular transactions and the signal transduction pathway: that integrate them, (4) the crosstalk between protein folding and proteolysis mediated by chaperones. The field of heat shock proteins and molecular chaperones has grown rapidly and draws interest not only from traditional scientific disciplines in the basic sciences but also from numerous areas of biomedical research including neurodegenerative disease, infectious diseases, cancer, and heart disease. The meeting will include seven lecture and three posted sessions. The proposed sessions include: I-Diseases of protein misfolding, II Quality control and protein trafficking III-Cellular response to stress IV-Chaperone function in disease and development V-Regulation of the stress response VI-Molecular chaperones and proteolysis, and VII- Chaperone biochemistry and protein folding. Each session will consist of eight to nine oral presentations and will be chaired by an invited speaker. A maximum of two additional speakers will be pre-invited per session and the remainder will be selected from submitted abstracts. This balance talks allows the meeting to feature presentations by leading scientists, to e responsive to exciting new developments to encourage diverse participation and to recognize new investigators. The subsequent meetings (2006 and 2008) will follow a similar format and will include topics highly relevant to the current research at the time of the meeting.